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Thursday, April 24, 2014

If you’re looking for
a threesome with John Turturro, Woody Allen’s stylings and Hasidic Brooklyn,
start taking off your pants.

Director, writer and
actor Turturro has cast himself as a leading man. He plays ladies’ man
Fioravante and Woody Allen plays his lifelong friend, Murray.

An offer for a
suitable partner for a ménage a
trois sets up an implausible plot where Murray becomes a pimp for his
cash-strapped friend (and first time gigolo), Fioravante. The unlikely pairing
of Allen and Turturro in these roles was obviously built for immediate humor
and they definitely provide that.

You can almost see
how the female characters assume this gigolo, who gets his hands dirty, could
be worth their money because he’s “disgusting in a very positive way.” Almost.
It’s really difficult to grasp why every woman in the film is dumb enough to
fall for all of this, and that’s where the film fails.

That aside, Turturro directs his characters with some lovely
performances. Sharon Stone plays vulnerable and understated. Sofia Vergara is
less cartoonish than I expected she could be. French singer Vanessa Paradis
makes us believe her ridiculous story is sweet and not cruel. And Allen gives
one of his most relaxed performances — ever.

Sometimes the dialogue, the jazz soundtrack and the
enchanting New York setting tossed me into the wonderful world of a Woody Allen
film. Sometimes I was thrilled that I had landed in a modern Moonstruck. Too many times I thought I
was watching a bad Turturro dream.But the sweetness of the film, and the small moments throughout,
made up for the thin plot — and I was charmed-off-guard.

Simply
put:Not top shelf, but it’s funny and more
charming than it should be.

Award
potential: Nope. Director Turturro
pulls some great performances out of everyone, but he didn’t write the
characters as strong as Allen does.

Thursday, April 17, 2014

Wes Anderson's new
film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, is a
visually stunning comic film set in an Old World hotel
in Zubrowka, a fictional '30s European nation. It’s full of Wes Anderson’s
trademark whimsy and it’s another showcase of how evolved Anderson is at
crafting delightful cinematic visuals.

The plot, like many
Anderson films, isn’t worth commenting on. Unfortunately, neither are the characters.
I respected this new Wes Anderson film, and many are calling it his
masterpiece, but I wish I had enjoyed it more. I’d love to watch the sled scene
again or actually visit any of the oversized buildings shown onscreen, but I just can’t fully
recommend the complete two hours.

Simply
put:Wes Anderson’s visuals and universe are
delightful to watch, but without characters to care about, I was ready to check
out early.

Award
potential: Ralph Fiennes pulls off proper Anderson comedy
and I hope he joins the team again, but there’s not enough here for award
consideration.

Chris Evans returns
as the Cap', in Captain America: The Winter
Soldier, to defend America’s ideals in the modern world.

I should note that I walked
into this film with a super case of superhero fatigue, but this film
entertained me. It’s a little more on the Iron Man
and Avengers side of the comic book spectrum;
not The Hulk, Iron Man 2, Fantastic Four,
Amazing Spiderman side.

For starters, there’s
no origin story. And there’s no baddie who accidentally turns himself into a
powerful monster. As part of a more complex storyline, Cap finds a marvelous villain
in modern government and the very military unit he
defends. And who better to head that group up than — Robert Redford, star of 70’s
paranoid movies (3 Days of the Condor,
All The Presidents Men).

The
banter is witty, the one-on-one fights are fun and curves are thrown at you at unsuspected
moments. And by curves, I mean Scarlett Johansson,
winning in her sidekick role. Eventually, the plot and the action got bigger
and my interest got smaller.

Friday, April 11, 2014

It’s easy to see why
the thespian in Jude Law would want to sink his teeth into the raunchy,
foul-mouthed cocksure character known as Dom Hemingway, as the film is filled
with showy speeches and outrageous dialogue.

It just never seems
clear why we should care about this criminal, his friend Dickie (Richard E.
Grant) or this thin plot. The film starts wheels off (with an unforgettable
opening scene and the most inventive onscreen car crash to date) and settles
down into a safe ending for the safecracker who wants to re-connect with his estranged daughter.

Simply
put: Jude Law has fun with
the verbose and raunchy role, but it’s a long 93 minutes when you don’t care
about the character or plot.

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Divergent, based on the first novel in the young
adult series, is an action-adventure film set in a world where people are
divided into distinct factions based on human virtues.

For most of the film
Shailene Woodley, a talented standout in The
Descendants and The Spectacular Now,
plays the main character Beatrice (Tris) as a quiet, contemplative girl who has
to choose her faction and then compete to stay in it. Whether she’s in a dream
sequence (yawn), an action sequence (just OK) or just staring at the ground
(she’s as bored as I), I kept wondering exactly what Tris is thinking about.

There are a lot of
storytelling problems with this movie and it just seems to be going through the
motions.

As far as the stars: Shailene Woodley gets a pass, my fave Kate
Winslet needs to return her Oscar for overacting and Theo James might just be a
new star if he can remove his unintentionally funny tattoo — and remove himself
from this 3-movie mess.

Simply
put: The book has a lot of intriguing
thoughts and suspense, but unless the heroine is thinking about these things, I couldn’t find them in the movie.